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The reggaeton duo Wisin & Yandel announced Monday the upcoming launch of the song “Adrenalina” that they recorded with Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez.

Wisin told a press conference that the tune “really moves” and joining forces in it are “four Puerto Ricans who have brought a lot of success” to the island through their international careers.

He said they recorded the song for one of Lopez’s projects, but after hearing “the tones and the vibe,” they invited Martin to take part as well because of the music’s energy, which they compared to “Livin’ la Vida Loca.”

“We told him it was an explosion of a number. The public needs to see people united and preferably by music so it never ends,” Wisin said.

Both Martin and Lopez had previously teamed up with Wisin & Yandel to make recordings.

Martin did it when he invited the reggaeton duo to do the song “Frio” (Cold) that he included on his disc “Musica + Alma + Sexo” (Music + Soul + Sex), while Lopez sang for the Wisin & Yandel album “Los Lideres” (The Leaders) the single “Follow the Leader.”

The duo and Lopez are also teaming up in December for concerts in Puerto Rico.

This will be the first time in 11 years that New York-born J.Lo will appear on the Caribbean island.

“They’d better dress comfortably because they’re going to sweat a lot. J.Lo is anxious to be in her land,” Wisin said, adding that “many U.S. artists have confirmed” their participation in the concert.

Cuban singer-songwriter Amaury Gutierrez is meeting up once more with his Peruvian colleague Gianmarco at the Latin Grammy Awards for their song “Invisible,” nominated for Song of the Year.

“He (Gianmarco) told me he had some titles of songs that don’t exist. Only the titles. Then he started reading them to me and I immediately chose to do ‘Invisible,’” the Miami-based Gutierrez said in an interview with Efe.

That was the beginning of the song “Invisible,” which ended being the first single from Gianmarco’s “20 Años” (20 Years) disc in July.

In a matter of 90 minutes, the two artists had finished the song that is now competing for Song of the Year against others by the likes of Alejandro Sanz, Ricardo Arjona, Antonio Orozco, Juan Luis Guerra, Juanes, Joaquin Sabina, and Jesse & Joy.

Gutierrez expressed his gratitude for the nomination, though he is “still thinking” about whether he will attend the Nov. 15 awards gala in Las Vegas.

“These things make me very nervous,” said the artist, who last year won his first Latin Grammy for his disc “Sesiones Intimas” (Intimate Sessions).

With his inseparable guitar at hand, the Cuban artist has written many hit songs performed by such artists as Andres Cepeda, Johnny Ray, Luis Fonsi, Luis Enrique, Mijares, Willy Chirino, Ricardo Montaner, Noel Schajiris and David Bisbal.

Mexico has it own real life ‘Day of the Dead’ mystery on its hands involving one of the country’s most ruthless thugs – Los Zeta founder and its jefe – Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano.

Did the Mexican Navy really kill him? Who stole his corpse from the morgue? Who gave permission to exhume the bodies of Lazcano’s parents for DNA samples? Why did the Mexican government need to get DNA proof when there’s no body to test and they claim to have fingerprint proof? Who is resting inside Lazcano’s massive mausoleum in Apan, Hidalgo? What role if any does the narco church of Our Lady of Sun Juan of the Lakes play in all of this? Why is U.S. DEA so quiet on this major narco death?

And those are just some of the questions associated with the October 7th killing of former special commando Lazcano on a baseball field some 70 miles south of the Texas border in Progeso, Coahuila.

The 37-year-old narco moved his way up the ranks from enforcer to drug trafficker to narco entrepreneur – creating one of the most ruthless cartels in 1999. The Zetas and Lazcano made a name for themselves with their trademark beheadings, bodies in acid baths, and mass killings and torture of kidnapped migrants from Central America. Wes Craven or Stephen King fictional horror stories can’t match the savagery of Lazcano and his henchmen.

This is in great part a mystery because of the actions of the very people in charge of security for the country. Mexican officials quickly claimed naval infantry had killed Lazcano as he casually watched a baseball game. They allegedly photographed the body and took his fingers prints right before unknown persons broke into the city’s morgue heavily armed and stole the corpse.

On October 16, President Felipe Calderon announced to his nation that ‘El Lazca’ was dead – this was his ‘Osama bin Laden is dead’ moment. It didn’t matter the missing corpse was shorter than U.S. official records on Lazcano show. Apparently it didn’t matter either that there was no body.

A week later authorities announce they were going to exhume the bodies of his parents leaving many wondering if Lazcano was really dead and whether Calderon lied. Others believe the U.S. quietly asked Mexico to make double sure. No one is quiet sure how the Mexican government obtained permission to exhume the bodies or how conclusive the genetic tests were.

Where ever the real Lazcano is, one thing is not a mystery his body will end up at the grand mausoleum at the Pachuca’s San Francisco Ejidal Cemetery he built in 2009. There will also be a solemn Catholic service for him at the church Lazcano built with narco money, Our Lady of San Juan of the Lakes.

Town gossip says Los Federales are hiding out in town to see if the mausoleum doors open or if there is a late night mass at Lazcano’s church. We assume Mexican officials plan on stealing back the dead corpse to conduct more identifications – or simply not to give the devil any peace.

Almost three weeks after Lazcano’s death at the hands of the Mexican Navy his body remains missing but light streams through the stain glass windows of his mausoleum.

This is a perfect tale for Halloween and Mexico’s Day of the Dead, scary if it weren’t so real.

Foreign tourists visiting Spain between January and September spent 45.1 billion euros ($58.2 billion), some 7.2 percent more than in the same period of 2011, the Industry, Energy and Tourism Ministry said Monday.

In September alone, international tourists spent 6.24 billion euros ($8.1 billion), about 13.4 percent more than in the same month of 2011, thanks to a 51-percent surge in the number of arrivals and a 7.8-percent rise in the average expenditure per person.

Spain welcomed 3.8 percent more foreign tourists - some 47 million - in the first nine months of this year.

Britain and Germany were the chief sources of foreign visitors, both in September and for the year to date, while the Balearic Islands and Catalonia on the Mediterranean coast were the areas that benefited most from the increased spending.

The Balearic Islands accounted for close to 27 percent of foreign tourists’ expenditures in Spain for the month of September.

Vacationing was the reason for the trips in which spending showed the biggest hike, up 16.5 percent, compared with a downturn in outlay on business trips. EFE

Quiara Alegría Hudes and Aminda (Mindy) Marqués Gonzalez have joined the 19-member Pulitzer Board out of Columbia University, which administers the highly coveted Pulitzer Prizes.

Hudes is s playwright and educator who won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful. The Philadelphia native made her New York debut with the drama Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007. Her book for Broadway’s In the Heights was also a Pulitzer finalist and a Tony nominee, and the piece won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2008 before touring nationally and internationally to widespread acclaim.

Originally trained as a musician, Hudes studied classical piano, Afro-Cuban piano, American music, and composition. She received a bachelor’s degree in music composition from Yale University and a master of fine arts degree in playwriting from Brown University. Though she no longer composes, Hudes continues to engage music as a deep and common thread in her playwriting.

Hudes serves on the Dramatists Guild Council and as a Board Member at Philadelphia Young Playwrights, the organization that produced her first play in the 10th grade.

Marqués is the vice president and executive editor of The Miami Herald, which has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes in its history and was twice a Pulitzer finalist in recent years. As executive editor, Marqués has oversight and responsibility for the newspaper’s print and online news operation, which reaches 1.2 million readers each week. A 1986 graduate of the University of Florida, she began her journalism career 25 years ago as a summer intern at the newspaper covering community news. She moved to editing in 1994, where she directed government reporting, local politics and breaking news. Named deputy metro editor in 2000, she oversaw metro, state and community news operations.

From 2002 to 2007, Marqués was Miami bureau chief for People magazine, overseeing coverage for the southeast U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America. She returned to The Miami Herald in 2007 as a multimedia editor to help launch Miami.com, the newspaper’s entertainment website. As executive features/Sunday editor, she directed a redesign of the lifestyle sections from tabloid to broadsheet. She also was responsible for the newsroom’s enterprise stories and for oversight of the Sunday paper. Named managing editor in 2010, Marqués led a wide-ranging newsroom reorganization building teams around content, design and the distribution of stories across platforms. During her tenure as managing editor, The Miami Herald was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for coverage of the earthquake in Haiti.

In November 2010, Marqués was named executive editor, the newspaper’s first Hispanic editor and only the second woman to hold the post. During her editorship, The Miami Herald was a 2012 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for a series detailing the state’s systemic failures in regulating assisted-living facilities.

She is a member of the National Advisory Board of the Poynter Institute, sits on the board of the Associated Press Media Editors and has served as a Pulitzer journalism juror. She was named one of the 2011-2012 Alumni of Distinction for the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.

Hudes and Marqués were joined by prominent 20-year journalist Steve Coll.

The board is self-perpetuating in the election of members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years for a total of nine years.

Unions are threatening to “kidnap the state if it does not align itself with their interests,” with labor organizations being manipulated by “immoral leaders who have managed to entrench themselves,” the Mexican Catholic Church said.

“Now, they threaten to kidnap the state if it does not align itself with their interests, which, in fact, are not the same as those of their members and will help national development even less,” the Archdiocese of Mexico City’s weekly Desde la Fe newspaper said in its editorial.

“They are seen as political forces that sell themselves to the top bidder, and they have been hijacked by immoral leaders who have managed to entrench themselves and create power structures that go against the nature of unions,” the editorial said.

The Mexican Catholic Church has now weighed in on the controversial labor reforms held up in Congress by the parties opposed to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The parties want to guarantee democracy and transparency in the unions.

Not wanting people to risk their lives to see his show in New York this past weekend, comedian Louis CK wrote and open letter to ticket holders informing him that the show had been canceled as a precaution.

For all his hilariously foul language, CK really is a good guy and doesn’t want to see anyone get hurt. In the letter below, he gives the New York ticket holders the options for what to do with their tickets. Read the letter from “your dumb friend” below.

On Thursday, Louis Vuitton opened its first global store in Latin America in São Paulo, Brazil.

The 10,620-square-foot is located in the city’s Cidade Jardim mall has a far more luxurious interior design and is substantially larger then regular stores.

The new location also includes a library containing a number of collections along with Louis Vuitton City Guides.

Vuitton describes the guides as being “packed with hidden gems and unique experiences” for the “luxury-minded traveler.” Currently, there are guides for dozens of cities, including, Tokyo, New York City, and Paris.

The store also has the Haute Maroquinerie room, where customers can choose from different types of leather, hardware, and metal to create their own one-of-a-kind Louis Vuitton bags and purses. Once customized, the items are made in Asnières workshop near Paris.

This is the 5th Louis Vuitton store in Sao Paolo, but the first global store.

Vuitton is preparing further expansion for Brazil in 2013 and plan to open additional stores in, Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro, and Barra

A Los Angeles teen has been booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter for running over and killing two sleeping homeless people Sunday morning.

Police believe 19-year-old Carmen Elena Chavez was drunk when she ran over a man and woman who were sleeping on a sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles.

In order to remove the bodies of the unidentified victims, police reportedly had to use the jaws of life to break apart the 1989 Mercedes-Benz to get underneath it. Chavez dragged the victims approximately 50 feet before stopping.

Chavez and several other people in the car had just left a party when the incident occurred. A number of the occupants fled, but Chavez and the owner of the vehicle were arrested.

Witnesses say all occupants, including Chavez, fled the scene but later returned to retrieve purses and other belongings.

Police have said they believe Chavez was driving drunk and speeding when she attempted to make a turn and lost control of the vehicle.

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The San Francisco Giants capped off an amazing playoff run with a sweep of the Detroit Tigers last night to win their second World Series in three years.

The Giants were down 2-0 to the Reds in the first round before rattling off three straight victories in Cincinnati. The Giants were on the brink of elimination in the National League Championship Series (NLCS) against the Cardinals but won three games in a row to make it to the World Series

Two Venezuelans carried the Giants this postseason. Marco Scutaro drove in the game winning single in the 10th inning last night. Scutaro also won the NLCS MVP.

The World Series MVP was Pablo Sandoval, who turned in one of the most memorable performances in World Series history in Game 1. Sandoval hit three home runs that game, including two homers against Detroit ace pitcher Justin Verlander.

Sandoval led the postseason with six home runs and 13 RBIs. In the World Series he was 8-for-16 in the four wins.

The latest impreMedia-Latino Decisions tracking poll shows that Latinos are more enthusiastic and more likely to vote than ten weeks ago when the initial poll was fielded. Forty-five percent of Latino voters say they are more enthusiastic about voting in 2012 compared to 2008. That number is up from 37% from ten weeks ago when the initial impreMedia-Latino Decisions tracking poll was fielded. Furthermore, 87% of Latino voters say they are almost certain they will vote on November 6th, which includes 8% of Latino voters have already voted. In 2008, 84% of Latino registered voters cast a ballot according to Census statistics.

Additionally, the poll shows that a sizable proportion of Latino voters think that on many issues it does not matter whether Obama or Romney is President, and that fighting in Congress is a larger systematic problem.

On many issues, a large percentage of Latino voters feel it makes no difference whether Obama or Romney wins. For example, regarding the prospect of immigration reform, while 52% think chances are better under an Obama presidency, 37% of Latino voters say it makes no difference if Obama wins, the prospects will not change. Regarding the degree of compromise and cooperation in the Congress, 45% of Latino voters say a second Obama term would not improve cooperation in Congress, and 43% a Romney presidency would make no difference.

Overall, Obama has the support of 73% of all Latino registered voters, compared to 21% who favor Romney. The 52-point gap matches the largest gap among Latinos this year, also found in the October 1 tracking poll.

Cuban President Raul Castro visited the central provinces of Villa Clara and Sancti Spiritus, drenched by heavy rains brought by Hurricane Sandy, which caused considerable damage as it swept through the eastern part of the island, the official AIN news agency reported.

“We can say we’ve had a big hurricane in the east and a small ‘Flora’ (the devastating 1964 hurricane) in the central part of the country,” Castro said. “We didn’t want to go to the east without first visiting the central provinces.”

On Saturday Castro visited the provinces of Villa Clara and Sancti Spiritus after presiding over a Council of Ministers meeting which analyzed, among other matters, the measures the government will adopt for repairing the damage from Hurricane Sandy, which crossed the eastern part of the island from south to north last Thursday.

In Santiago, the second most populous province of the country with more than 1 million inhabitants, there have been reported in the housing sector alone more than 14,200 completely destroyed homes and more than 32,000 badly damaged, as well as crop losses, roadways blocked, power outages and loss of telephone service.

The damage extends to other provinces of the region as well, including Holguin and Guantanamo.

The government has not yet released an official estimate of the economic losses caused by the hurricane, but preliminary reports estimate that in Santiago de Cuba they amount to more than 2.12 billion pesos (more than $88 million).

Hurricane Sandy is about 505 kilometers (some 310 miles) south-southeast of New York City and moving at 32 kph (about 20 mph) toward the northeastern United States, where it is expected to arrive late in the day on Monday.

Sandy, a Category 1 hurricane, has maximum sustained winds of 140 kph (85 mph), the National Hurricane Center, or NHC, said in its 8:00 a.m. advisory.

“Sandy is expected to transition into a frontal or wintertime low pressure system prior to landfall. However ... this transition will not be accompanied by a weakening of the system ... and in fact ... a little strengthening is possible during this process,” the NHC said.

The storm “is expected to weaken after moving inland,” the National Hurricane Center said.

The hurricane’s powerful winds will be felt along the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, eastern Virginia and the central and southern portions of Chesapeake Bay.

A tropical storm warning is in effect from north of Surf City to Duck, North Carolina, Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, and Bermuda.

Hurricane-force winds will be felt along the coast from Chincoteague, Virginia, to Chatham, Massachusetts, as well as in Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, the coasts of the northern Delmarva Peninsula, New Jersey, the New York City area, Long Island, Connecticut and Rhode Island,” the NHC said.

Forecasters are warning that the storm could cause heavy snowfall in the mountains of western Virginia and eastern Kentucky, as well as in higher elevations on the North Carolina-Tennessee border, and in Maryland, with coastal conditions remaining poor from Florida to New England over the next few days.

Government offices, schools, transit systems and businesses have closed from northern Virginia to New York.

New York City officials ordered the evacuation of more than 370,000 people living in low-lying areas, such as Coney Island in Brooklyn and Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan.

The New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE, which is near the evacuation area, will be closed on Monday and has not made a decision about trading on Tuesday.

“We support the consensus of the markets and the regulatory community that the dangerous conditions developing as a result of Hurricane Sandy will make it extremely difficult to ensure the safety of our people and communities, and safety must be our first priority. We will work with the industry to determine the next steps in restoring trading as soon as the situation permits,” the NYSE said.

Flights have been cancelled at airports in the Northeast and Amtrak suspended train service from Washington to Boston.

States of emergency have been declared in nine states from North Carolina to Massachusetts to prepare for the storm.

Power outages are expected across the region and utility crews have been deployed to restore electric service as soon as the storm passes.